Why Sell Your Old Phone?

This post is sponsored by eBay, but all opinions are completely mine — so take heed, bub!

Why trade in your old phone to your carrier for a tiny fraction off the price of your new phone when you can sell it for actual cash? eBay now has a marketplace specifically tailored around the buying and selling of old phones that aims to put money in your pocket, where it belongs!

Perhaps you need a little more coaxing, though? Here are my top 10 reasons why you should sell your old phone to eBay rather than trading it in to your carrier or just letting it sit in a forgotten corner of your house for the next few decades to be discovered by archaeologists generations from now.

Top 10 Reasons to Sell Your Old Phone

It’s collecting dust instead of you collecting money. Unless you’re trying to harvest food for a wealthy family of dust mites from Dubai who promise to somehow pay you in copious amounts of human currency that you can take to the bank, what’s the point in collecting dust, anyway?

How else are you going to afford the new(er) model? Elvis (the Costello one) would advise you to go with this year’s model, and so would I — provided that it’s a significant upgrade from what you already have. I’ll admit that I love to chase the new and shiny as much as the next gadget-loving geek, but sometimes there’s not much of a difference between the phone you just bought last year and the version that just hit the market today — in which case, I recommend holding off to see what next year brings. That being said, there’s nothing wrong with checking the used phone market at eBay to see what people are willing to pay for the phone you already have — it might just be enough to make the phone you want surprisingly affordable.

Tech loses value quickly; recouping costs is nothing to be ashamed of. As I said above, sometimes the cost of a new phone can be significantly offset by what the market will yield for your suddenly not-so-new phone. If you’re lucky, you might be able to get a large chunk of cash back to pay toward your next coveted device.

Clutter isn’t cool anymore. As human beings, we like to hoard things — perhaps not to the degree that there’d be a television series devoted to our habits, but it’s not an atypical behavior for our species. George Carlin even famously quipped that a house is really just “a place for your stuff.” Heck, if you go to any city in the world, it’s not uncommon to see people who don’t even have homes lugging around big piles of this “stuff.” But if we learned anything from Fight Club, it’s that “the things you own end up owning you.” Voluntarily simplifying your life begins with paring down your possessions — and that pile of old phones you have sitting around? Not cool. Sell it all off and forget about it! Move on.

Your gadget has sentimental value? Take a picture and frame it. Or, if you’re extra well-to-do, get an artist friend to paint a portrait of your old phone in oil on canvas to hang above your mantel.

How often do you really use your old stuff? Be honest. Maybe you’ll stash that old phone in the universal junk drawer that’s overflowing with rubber bands, half-dead batteries, broken shoelaces, and leftover nuts and bolts that didn’t quite fit in that IKEA shelf you put together last year with the thought that it “might come in handy” someday. Let’s be honest and admit that we both know this much: it won’t. Ever.

They make horrible dominoes. Sell the old phone(s) and get a real toy. Like a set of actual dominoes.

Your trash may be someone else’s much-anticipated treasure. Make someone’s day. Think of the children! Especially the children who want to buy your old phone and have allowance money burning a hole in their pocket.

Your significant other won’t have to nag you to get rid of “that old junk” anymore. So you have a habit of picking up old TRS-80s and monochrome monitors and ColecoVision consoles every time you go to the flea market on Sundays or wind up at a garage sale in your neighborhood — what of it? Well, the fact that you couldn’t even fit a Vespa in your two-car garage anymore is probably what a marriage counselor would accept as a legitimate grievance on your significant other’s behalf. Be a champion for the cause of renewed wedded bliss and get rid of that crap, already! Start with the old phones and work your way up to the bigger detritus. You’ll get there.

Frugality is sexy. Less is more. To expound from that thought: less old junk sitting around is more money in your pocket. Weigh your options, make the smart choice, and enjoy the sexy new you!

If one or more of the aforementioned points doesn’t convince you to at least check with eBay to see how much it can give you for your old phone, then I can’t help you! But if your senses haven’t completely left you, then you should compare what eBay will give you with what your carrier will give you for your old phone. Bargain hunting is what the Internet is for, and eBay’s been a part of the bargain-hunting Internet for a long time, now. It’s a company that knows what’s up.

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